Thank You

Error.

It's been a great year for stock investors in general and many sectors of the market are looking pricey. But a number of areas including emerging markets, commodities, and even retailers, didn't join in the good times.

Could it be that some of these laggards could get their turn to shine next year? Let's look at a few Website articles that consider that possibility.

In a piece for Great Britain's Telegraph newspaper, Julian Mayo, the co-chief investment officer of Charlemagne Capital, argues that emerging-market stocks are cheap historically and poised for a comeback.

The Telegraph

Mayo points out that the average price-to-earnings ratio of emerging-market stocks is close to an all-time low relative to developed markets.

"While we wouldn't want to predict whether this will reverse itself in the next three weeks or three months, we are confident that the next three years will see a better performance for these markets," he argues.

Central to his argument is that many developing markets will benefit from demand within their home countries, rather than from exports.

"From a stock picker's perspective, this trend towards domestic demand is a fortunate one, as it is an area of the emerging markets in which many of the best-managed companies are to be found," he writes. "Examples include nappies and paper tissues in China (Hengan), retailing in Latin America (Falabella), as well as more niche businesses like contact lenses (St. Shine Optical) and airports in Turkey." .

Other beneficiaries of this trend, he writes, are a wide range of financial services companies: "not just banks (such as Standard Chartered and Thailand's Kasikornbank), but also stock exchanges in Latin America and Russia, and pension fund managers in Chile."

While his argument is short on financial analysis, he makes a case worth considering.

Street Authority

"It's hard to see how coal miners have any upside in coming years, with both natural gas and clean energy set to take market share. And it's still not clear what catalysts will emerge to reignite gold and silver prices (short of a re-emergence of inflation)," he writes.

He also argues that the teen retailers look like poor rebound candidates, "as the field simply has too many stores chasing too few customers."

"MasterCard and rival Visa run the world's largest payment networks," writes the FT. "The more people buy with debit and credit cards and other forms of electronic payment, the more the groups make. MasterCard is expected to raise earnings per share by about 18% both next year and the year after."

The question is whether that growth is enough to justify the lofty multiple on the stock.